The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street was the fifty-first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Lawrence Miles, released 5 November 2001 and featured the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor.
This novel marks Sabbath's first "official" appearance in a novel - having previously appeared in The Slow Empire as an unnamed figure.
Publisher's summary
On February 9, 1783, a funeral was held in the tunnels at the dead heart of London. It was the funeral of a warrior and a conjurer, a paladin and an oracle, the last of an ancient breed who'd once stood between the Earth and the bloodiest of its nightmares.
Her name was Scarlette. Part courtesan, part sorceress, this is her history: the part she played in the Siege of Henrietta Street, and the sacrifice she made in the defence of her world.
In the year leading up to that funeral, something raw and primal ate its way through human society, from the streets of pre-Revolutionary Paris to the slave-states of America. Something that only the eighteenth century could have summoned, and against which the only line of defence was a bordello in Covent Garden.
And then there was Scarlette's accomplice, the "elemental champion" who stood alongside her in the final battle. The one they called the Doctor.
Plot
The Prologue
In 1782, a prostitute named Lisa-Beth Lachlan is hired by a member of Parliament for her services in black coffee (a term for sex involving tantric rituals). During the act, Lisa-Beth reaches the Shaktyanda and accidentally reaches into the horizon that no human is supposed to tread into. This leads to her accidentally summoning a Babewyn which (presumably) kills her client - leaving behind only a bloodstained sheet.
Chapter 1: The House
Shortly after Lisa-Beth's accidental summoning, the witch-courtesan Scarlette hosts a ball in the House on Henrietta Street. The ball serves as a funeral for the old order of the arcane in America (which has largely been destroyed by the establishment of the United States of America), an introduction to society for Juliette (a young girl under Scarlette's protection), and an invitation to an event that will happen on the first of December. In attendance is members of various organizations - including the near-extinct Mayakal tribe.
Lisa-Beth is present at the ball, not because she was invited but because she seeks to move into the House. During the ball, she is brought into an upstairs room and finds Scarlette fencing with a mysterious man. This man is the Doctor (who entered into the House rather mysteriously, is to maried to Juliette, and organized the ball). The Doctor explains that the ball serves as a way to gather an army to protect the Earth from the threat of the babewyns after the destruction of the "elementals". Most of the attendees have seemingly only joined out of curiosity, however, one attendee has joined for more malevolent purposes - as this attendee attacks the Doctor once Lisa-Beth and Scarlette leave. The attacker (a sixteen year old member of the Mayakal) leaves behind a warning in one word - a name tied to Scarlette's past, that name being Sabbath.
Chapter 2: London
After the Doctor has recovered from being attacked, he begins studying the babewyns but finds that their biology is seemingly only structured to fool necropsies - as though they only exist by sheer willpower. The threat of the babewyns has been steadily worsening. At a rally for Charles Fox, the Doctor, Juliette, and Rebecca stop a babewyn from killing a white coffee prostitute and her client. It seems that the babewyns no longer require tantra to be summoned.
Around this time, Lisa-Beth begins talks with the Service (an organization founded by John Dee with a strong occult tradition) as Juliette begins experiments with time itself (helped by the young Emily Hart) in the Doctor's laboratory. Lisa-Beth's negotiations seem to be double-crossing as the Service and Scarlette are opposed to each other. This is until Lisa-Beth ties up one of the Service's agents and threatens to release the names of the Service's five leaders if they do not leave the House alone.
On the sixteenth of April, a marquis purposefully summons and binds a babewyn - under orders from Sabbath, a rogue agent from the Service.
Shortly after this, as the women of the House have dreams of a horrifying world controlled by the babewyns, Scarlette finds the Doctor in his laboratory, unconscious from a nervous fit. Katya is attacked by an angry mob and Charles Fox gains support from an unusual source - George Gordon, instigator of the 1780 London Riots (the event where Scarlette and Sabbath first met).
Characters
- Eighth Doctor
- Fitz Kreiner
- Anji Kapoor
- Scarlette
- Juliette Vierge
- Lisa-Beth Lachlan
- Katchka Nakhova
- Rebecca Macardle
- Tula Lui
- Sabbath
- Man with the Rosette
- Nie Who
- Anne-Belle Paley
- Charles Fox
- Charles Greville
- Emily Hart
- Émondeur
- King of Beasts
- Makandal
- The Countess of Jersey
Worldbuilding
Biology
- The Doctor briefly grows a beard to demonstrate how change is possible. He claims to be able to transmogrify himself into a being of pure energy through three thousand years of meditation.
- Sabbath removes the Doctor's second heart.
Locations
- The Jonah is Sabbath's steam ship.
- People of Hartlepool are called "monkeydanglers".
Philosophy
- Sabbath cites "Knox's maxim" when remembering his experience in the deeper realms of time.
Species
- The Babewyns originated in the Kingdom of Beasts.
Notes
- This novel departs from the "normal" novel style in that it is told as a non-fiction history book.
- What is suggested as the remains of Gallifrey is seen in this novel.
- The novel saw Lawrence Miles' surprise return to writing Doctor Who novels following a well-publicised online "resignation" in August 1999.[1] He claimed that he wrote it for money so he could buy new LEGO sets.[2]
- A hidden page on the Faction Paradox website listed several behind-the-scenes facts about the novel.[3]
- The novel begins in 1782, which saw the first printing of Les Liaisons dangereuses, a story about "a teenage girl's initiation into society while her destiny is manipulated by a scheming courtesan-queen and a dashing gentleman who seduces her in the name of society politics. Towards the end of the story, the gentleman finally asks the courtesan-queen to marry him. But then he dies horribly."
- Though thirteen groups were invited to the wedding, only twelve were ever named or mentioned, and one name on the list of invitations was illegible. The website parenthetically notes that it "obviously" couldn't be Faction Paradox, which "doesn't exist in this version of the universe". The comic Political Animals showed that the Faction did indeed survive the end of the War in Heaven.
- Given the book's "reliance on the mythology of the Doctor's universe", the website says it seems odd that no vampire contingent is invited to the Doctor's wedding. However, the Russian group, the Ereticy, is named for a vampire sect from Eastern European folklore. They were represented in the novel by Katya.
- The historical Lady Hamilton, who appears in the novel as Emily Hart, indeed has a significant gap in her life story around the time of this novel, and there has never been an explanation of why she changed her name from "Lyon" to "Hart".
- The Mozart premiere attended by the Eighth Doctor and Sabbath is the same one depicted in the film Amadeus.
- In AHistory, Lance Parkin acknowledges that Lawrence Miles intended the Man with the Rosette to be the Master. He is present at the Doctor's wedding: the Doctor's only family. He has no beard because the Doctor grows one, wears all black, apart from a blue and white rosette on his lapel, and refuses to fight the Doctor on the grounds that there are only four Time Lords left in the Universe. Despite being amnesic, the Doctor recognises him; Parkin wrote The School of Doom for the fanzine Myth Makers, showing a previous meeting, and discussion about the four survivors, between the Doctor and the Master during the first interim of Father Time.
- Daniel O'Mahony's A Rag and a Bone, published in the fanzine Myth Makers Presents: Essentials in 2003, follows this novel and shows Sabbath successfully supplanting the Doctor as part of the story's metafictional commentary on the state of Doctor Who at the time.
Continuity
- Sabbath continues to turn up in novels (though not always the main "villain") including PROSE: Anachrophobia, History 101, Camera Obscura, Time Zero, The Infinity Race, The Domino Effect, The Last Resort.
- The Man with the Rosette is next seen in The Gallifrey Chronicles.
- Mary Culver appears alongside Sabbath in AUDIO: Sabbath Dei and AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat.
- The Mayakai reappear alongside Sabbath in COMIC: Political Animals and COMIC: Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses.
- The Hellfire Club appears also in AUDIO: Minuet in Hell.
- The zoo on the Strand seen in the opening of this novel is later mentioned in PROSE: The Book of the War.
- The Doctor mentions the worlds of Ceres Alpha (PROSE: Dark Progeny) and one where faerie-tales come true. (PROSE: Grimm Reality)
- Fitz recovers a wheelchair from the TARDIS. (TV: Castrovalva)
- Thomas Jefferson's expedition for woolly mammoths in the American midwest is seen in PROSE: Grass.
- Scarlette mentions George III's mammoth. (PROSE: Grass, The Book of the War, COMIC: Political Animals, Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses)
Footnotes
External links
- The Adventuress of Henrietta Street at the Faction Paradox wiki
- The Adventuress of Henrietta Street at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street
- Outpost Gallifrey - Interview: Lawrence Miles (archived)
